Embankment seismic fragility assessment: A case study on Xi'an-Baoji expressway (China)

PLoS One. 2021 Feb 5;16(2):e0246407. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0246407. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Although embankment seismic damages are very complex, there has been little seismic fragility research yet. Researches on seismic fragility of bridges, dams and reinforced concrete (RC) structures have achieved fruitful results, which can provide references for embankment seismic fragility assessment. Meanwhile, the influencing degrees of retaining structures, such as retaining walls on the embankment seismic performances are still unclear. The K1025+470 embankment of the Xi'an-Baoji expressway was selected as the research object, and the finite difference models of the embankment fill-soil foundation system and embankment fill-soil foundation-retaining wall system were established. The ground-motion records for Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) were selected and the dynamic response analysis were conducted. Probabilistic Seismic Demand Analysis (PSDA) was used to deal with the IDA results and the seismic fragility curves were generated. Based on the assessment results, the influences of the retaining wall on the embankment seismic fragility were further verified. The research results show that regardless of which seismic damage parameter is considered or the presence or absence of the retaining wall, larger PGAs always correspond to higher probabilities of each seismic damage grade. Seismic damages to the embankment fill-soil foundation-retaining wall system are always lower than those of the embankment fill-soil foundation system under the same PGA actions, thus, the retaining wall can decrease the embankment seismic fragility significantly.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • China
  • Construction Materials*
  • Earthquakes*
  • Soil*

Substances

  • Soil

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant NO. 51808327) and Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant NO. ZR2019PEE016), awarded to author CY. Zibo Transportation Service Center is a commercial organization and provided support in the form of salary for FC. Shandong Dongtai Engineer Consulting Co., LTD. is also a commercial organization and provided support in the form of salary for XZ and LS. Laoling Branch of Dezhou Highway Development Center is not a commercial organization, but provided funding to author DL. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of all authors were articulated in the “author contributions” section.